Site Mobile Navigation

Massey Energy Stressed Safety, Former Executive Testifies

CHARLESTON, W. Va. — A crucial witness for federal prosecutors in the case against Donald L. Blankenship, who was the chief executive of the Massey Energy Company when 29 workers died in an explosion at the company’s Upper Big Branch coal mine in 2010, testified on Monday that the company had adopted a serious and high-level approach to safety before the disaster.

Christopher L. Blanchard, who was president of the Massey subsidiary that operated the Upper Big Branch mine when the explosion happened, also testified that Massey had made efforts to exceed federal safety standards.

“They wanted the hazards eliminated and the violations reduced,” Mr. Blanchard said under questioning from defense lawyers.

Mr. Blankenship, 65, is accused of plotting with others at Massey to violate mine safety rules and mislead investors and federal regulators. He has not been accused of direct responsibility for the April 5, 2010, deaths, the most in a coal mining accident in the United States in about four decades. Mr. Blankenship could be sentenced to 30 years in prison if the Federal District Court jury here convicts him of all of the charges he is facing.

Prosecutors have worked to depict Mr. Blankenship as a micromanager who knew that his mines were rife with unaddressed dangers and, in his quest to increase profits, pursued a policy of safety in name only.

Last week, under questioning by an assistant United States attorney, Mr. Blanchard testified that “given lower production constraints and more staff, a majority of violations could have been prevented.”

But Mr. Blankenship’s lawyers have dismissed the prosecution’s theories as baseless, and one of the lawyers, William W. Taylor III, on Monday referred to “a so-called conspiracy.” He renewed his effort to use Mr. Blanchard to bolster the defense by guiding him through dozens of exhibits, including emails, memos and disciplinary records, that Mr. Blankenship’s team hoped jurors might see as evidence of Massey’s commitment to safety.

When the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration issued citations, Mr. Blanchard testified, employees were sometimes warned, suspended or fired, even if they were high-ranking workers in the mines. Massey’s chief operating officer, Christopher Adkins, would send handwritten notes seeking information about violations, according to documents displayed in court. “You would agree it’s not an effective business strategy to ignore safety in a coal mine,” Mr. Taylor asked Mr. Blanchard.

“I would agree,” Mr. Blanchard replied. Monday was his third day of testimony under an agreement with federal prosecutors that spared him from an indictment but required his cooperation in the case against Mr. Blankenship.

Mr. Blanchard faced questions only from the defense on Monday.

Jury selection for the trial began on Oct. 1, and the proceedings in the blue-carpeted courtroom have sometimes grown tedious as lawyers and witnesses talked through scores of exhibits and Judge Irene C. Berger held repeated conferences at the bench to discuss potential evidence. On Monday, one juror appeared to fall asleep briefly.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

The government is likely to have another opportunity to question Mr. Blanchard on Tuesday. But so far, Mr. Blanchard has repeatedly said during cross-examination that he and Mr. Blankenship did not make an effort to evade mine safety rules, even as Upper Big Branch and other Massey mines accrued hundreds and hundreds of citations.

The defense used Mr. Blanchard’s time on the witness stand to depict mine safety citations as an element of day-to-day life in a federally regulated industry. (Federal statistics show that in 2009, the last full year before the catastrophe at West Virginia’s Upper Big Branch, the mine safety administration assessed more than 173,000 violations in the nation’s mines, including those that produce coal; more than a quarter of those violations were contested.)

Asked whether “citations are inevitable,” Mr. Blanchard said they were.

Mr. Blanchard also explained the precise nature of some of the hundreds of violations that regulators had uncovered, showing that at least a fraction of them had been resolved quickly. In one instance, he testified, a violation was fixed within three minutes. But even those violations, Mr. Blanchard said, took a financial toll that frustrated Massey executives.

One official, he said, tried to “get the point across that 10 cents worth of labor to prevent a $1,000 violation was a smart thing to do.”

But Mr. Blankenship’s team is also suggesting that, despite the corporate oversight and concern, responsibility for safety violations rested in the mines, not Massey’s corporate offices. Mr. Blanchard said he believed that individual miners sometimes did not “really understand the implications” of violating federal standards.

“Would you say that it can be sometimes hard to get coal miners to do what you want them to do?” Mr. Taylor asked.

“Certainly, sir,” Mr. Blanchard replied.

A version of this article appears in print on October 27, 2015, on Page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Mine Company Stressed Safety, a Former Executive Testifies. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe